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Mourning Officer Brian Moore

Police officers embrace after hearing of the death of Brian Moore.Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times

The idea that police officers put their lives on the line to protect the public is treated as a cliché, an abstraction, until reality destroys such complacency.

Officer Brian Moore of the New York Police Department died on Monday, two days after he was shot in the face while on patrol in Queens Village, in southern Queens.

He was 25 years old. He was working undercover in a plainclothes anti-crime unit, looking for people preparing to commit burglaries. The police say that when he and his partner, Erik Jansen, drove up to the suspect, Demetrius Blackwell, Mr. Blackwell pulled a gun from his waistband, fired and ran.

Officer Moore was just two months away from his fifth anniversary on the force. He joined the department in July 2010, and was too young to remember the days when the city he served was overrun with crime, violence and fear. Back then New York was seen by many as the raging opposite of the placid streets of Officer Moore’s hometown of Massapequa, on Long Island.

The city is a far, far safer place today, practically suburban in parts, except for neighborhoods where crime, gangs and drugs are stubborn, and guns are everywhere. In those places, cops like Officers Moore and Jansen, working in plainclothes, without uniforms and squad cars, move toward the danger, and face perils many of the rest of us have forgotten.

Five New York City cops have been shot in the last five months. Officers Andrew Dossi and Aliro Pellerano, plainclothes cops who were shot while investigating an armed robbery in the Bronx, survived. Officer Moore joins Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, shot in December in Brooklyn, on the tragic list of those who have fallen in the line of duty.

Officer Moore’s job was to prevent crime and to take guns off the streets, to be aggressive within limits — to respect the Constitution, and the rights and dignity of those he was sworn to protect. It was also his job to make instant judgments on darkened streets about people who might or might not have been ready to kill.

It’s a thankless, dangerous job. There is something extraordinary about the sacrifices made by police officers, and something especially so about the families who treat police service as a vocation. Officer Moore was the son and nephew of New York police sergeants. His willingness to risk injury and death for the safety of others was surely a cause of great family pride, and in this tragic case, deep sorrow.

Those who yearn for a more peaceful New York City and deplore the bloodshed caused by its grotesque abundance of guns should pause to honor Officer Moore’s sacrifice, and never forget it. Those who deplore the crimes of officers who abuse their power — the dominant strain of news coverage about policing today — should remember the fuller truth: There are many, many good cops who serve and protect, and the city needs them.